Catholic Taiwanese Foundation in the fight against Alzheimer's

by Xin Yage

Taiwan launches a month dedicated to raising awareness about the disease and reduce its effects through a healthy diet, physical activity, memory exercises. Almost 50% of young people between 18 and 34 years are beginning to show signs memory loss. Competitions, theater workshops and singing for the elderly to encourage creativity.

Taipei (AsiaNews) - Today marks the International
Day for Alzheimer sufferers. In
Taipei the event is being marked with a "World
Alzheimer's month", spanning the entire month of September. Embracing
the initiative a Catholic foundation (天主教 失智 老人 基金会), is raising funds for the
cure of the disease and promote prevention awareness. September
1, a charity
march was held in Da an sen lin park (大 安森林 公园) in downtown Taipei.

Symptoms
of the advanced stage of the disease include confusion, irritability and
aggression, mood swings, speech difficulties, and long term memory loss. The
decision to march in the Taipei
park was not random: physical activity is indeed important for both physical
and mental health as a prerequisite for a healthy old age. The
Foundation has also developed its Facebook page app to enable young people to test
their own memory. Statistics
reveal that a quarter of those who are examined through the app have a memory
capacity of less than 50% compared to normal. Surprising
that the age of 60% of those who tested this app are between 18 and 34! The
majority of young people do not believe they have memory problems, which is why
the Taiwanese Catholic foundation to fight dementia believes that it is important
to educate from an early age to healthy food, a balanced diet, physical
activity and exercise in the use
of one's memory.

The foundation also offers activities for the elderly. In
recent weeks, in collaboration with the Ministry of Culture, it launched a nationwide
drama and singing competition, to select the best three groups of elderly performers.
A
special jury selects winners according to the criteria of creativity, beauty
and accuracy in the preparation of the presentation. Each
group is given a period of five minutes to test their skills. In
Taipei of the 40
groups that took part, the first group to
qualify was an Atayal aboriginal tribe, led by the grandmother of the village.
Their traditional costume, dance and pleasant harmonies was a hit with both the
public and the jury, helping
them reach the final. Then
there is another group of an old man, Mr. Hong (鋐 先生), who plays a dance with
the Chinese fan (gong fu shan, 功夫 扇) while a group of young street dancers (jie wu街舞) preform in the background. Mr.
Hong took part in the competition last year as a soloist, without much luck and
was immediately eliminated. "But
I was not discouraged," he says, "and when I saw these guys who were
practicing in the park with their street dance every night, just as I was
practicing the fan, I got the idea and asked them to collaborate .
And the result is really not that bad! And we only had a month to prepare: we
elders are not so shabby if we stay in shape. "

Tomorrow
in Taichung qualifiers for the central region will
be held and next week in the south in Kaohsiung.
The
finalists will compete in the grand finale at the end of the month in Taipei.